Q 01/05

Which region between the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf is believed to be where settled farming first emerged?

A) Arabian Peninsula

B) Fertile Crescent

C) Great Rift Valley

D) Golden Triangle

Answer · why

B) Fertile Crescent

The Fertile Crescent was home to the wild ancestors of wheat, barley, peas and lentils, and of sheep, goats, pigs and cattle. Few regions offered woul...

Q 02/05

Which animal did hunter-gatherers domesticate during the last Ice Age, thousands of years before the first farm animals?

A) Reindeer

B) Horse

C) Goat

D) Dog

Answer · why

D) Dog

The dog is the only large carnivore humans have ever domesticated. It descends from wolves that took up with hunting bands in the Pleistocene, long be...

Q 03/05

Which crop, bred in southern Mexico from the wild grass teosinte, is grown with beans and squash as the Three Sisters?

A) Maize

B) Quinoa

C) Cassava

D) Tomato

Answer · why

A) Maize

Maize looks nothing like teosinte, whose tiny ears hold five to ten seeds, each sealed in a hard case. In a Three Sisters plot the maize stalk gives t...

Q 04/05

Skeletons show that early farmers, compared with the hunter-gatherers who came before them, were on average what?

A) Taller

B) Longer-lived

C) Shorter

D) Stronger

Answer · why

C) Shorter

Shorter: studies around the world find that people lost height once they took up farming. Their cereal-heavy diets held more starch but less protein a...

Q 05/05

A gene variant that spread after the Neolithic Revolution lets many adults digest which food?

A) Milk

B) Eggs

C) Honey

D) Beans

Answer · why

A) Milk

Milk contains the sugar lactose, which most mammals stop digesting after weaning. The trait called lactase persistence evolved only after people began...